Transhuman Space 2110, 2130, 2200

[johndallman]

I'm starting to think about a THS campaign to run, someday. But I have this inability to run a setting "straight", I always want to do it differently in some way. An obvious way for THS is to move a little way into the future, and thinking about that led me to an idea about SF in general.

What you expect to happen is biased by your view of what's wrong now.

So I'm interested to know what people think are the problems in 2100 that may yield to socially acceptable technological developments, and if there would be enough motive/budget to attack those problems. Let's stay off improved uploading, OK? The sticky thread is just over that way.

An obvious one is faster computers and better AI design making AIs smarter and cheaper. What happens then?

[jalapeno_dude]

Probably not what you're looking for, but Broken Dreams p. 12 mentions a "Countdown to the Singularity" clock--as of January 1st, 2100 the predicted date is March 10th, 2116 at 3:32 AM GMT. What if the date turns out to be correct? (Start the campaign at 3:30 AM, see what happens...)

See Transhuman Space p. 25 for a little more on THS and the singularity.

[johndallman]

"Singularity? Wow, that's just so 20th century. It was pre-millennial tension, based on the ideas that things which were easy then would stay easy; that people wouldn't learn to adapt faster, and that raw MIPS have much to do with intelligence. All wrong."

"Now, if you have a solution for the last, I know some people who'd be very interested, but I should warn you, they are currently very jaded with snake-oil salesmen."

Seriously, unless you have a really convincing story as to why the kind of step change that would produce a singularity would happen in THS, I'm going to assume that it won't.

The idea that it could be predicted 16 years in advance to the half-hour is ... about as plausible as the Jehovah's Witnesses claim that the world has already ended, but nobody has noticed.

[RogerBW]

Side note first: I regard the Singularity as even more singularity-like than people give it credit for. To wit: from the inside, it just seems like more development along the same lines as before. It's only to people on the outside that it looks like a step change into incomprehensibility. As far as somebody from 1200AD looking through a futurescope is concerned, the singularity has already happened.

Anyway. AIs are gradually getting more intelligent. (And sarcastic.) And places that regard biohumanity as important tend to be places that are backward in other cultural respects as well. I see them gradually morphing into "proto-human sanctuaries" for the remaining people who'd rather die than upload (or regard the two as equivalent) Their children will probably leave, but medicine will keep them going for quite a while.

More intelligent AIs in greater numbers can outcompete biohumans in many niches. Why bother to put a human body on a vacuum cleaner ship when you can put a techspider there instead? Most humans upload to get back on an equal footing, or head for a sanctuary. The distinction between "SAI" and "uploaded human" becomes a matter of personality quirks and personal choice.

A key date: the first time two (or more) uploaded humans choose to bring an offspring into existence by purely digital means.

There have been hints at an AIs-vs-biohumans war. Frankly I don't see it lasting very long.

[Flyndaran]

Uploaded humans would still be limited by their "natural" intelligence, and handicaps from needing sleep, to getting bored, imperfect memory, etc.
A human level A.I. is vastly superior to an uploaded human.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Uploaded humans would still be limited by their "natural" intelligence, and handicaps from needing sleep, to getting bored, imperfect memory, etc.
A human level A.I. is vastly superior to an uploaded human.

My view: all those drawbacks are just human habits. An uploaded human still expects to forget things, to feel tired and sleep, to get bored faster than an SAI; eventually he'll grow out of those traits.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I'm starting to think about a THS campaign to run, someday. But I have this inability to run a setting "straight", I always want to do it differently in some way. An obvious way for THS is to move a little way into the future, and thinking about that led me to an idea about SF in general.

What you expect to happen is biased by your view of what's wrong now.

So I'm interested to know what people think are the problems in 2100 that may yield to socially acceptable technological developments, and if there would be enough motive/budget to attack those problems.

Technological development is always only half the story of events, and sometimes not that much. The feedback flows both ways.

Some things that may lie in the 22nd century for the THS setting:

1. The Duncanites hit the limits of their social arrangements.

The libertarian-anarchic arrangements of the Dunanites work, even given the in-game boost they receive for playability, because their population is both small and culturally homogenous. As their population grows, and vested interests develop, and more power concentrates in conflicting centers, the libertarian paradigm will give over to some more open form of government.

(The Dunancites already have a government, of course, which happens to call itself Avatar Klusterkorp. But that isn't a stable arrangement.)

What will emerge as the government of the Duncanites? That's the interesting question.

2. The social debate about whether the ghost is the original person is likely to be settled, one way or the other. The question is not whether the ghost is the original in objective reality, but what society perceives to be the truth, the resolution will transform the society and have implications for other debates as well.

3. Increasing technological control over the interlocked global ecosystem, weather, etc, will force the emergence of a world government on Earth de facto, even if not du jure. The conflicting interests of the major states on Earth will be resolved one way or another, but how? And by who? Are we talking about Jefferson and Locke, or Bismarck and Caesar?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

What will emerge as the government of the Duncanites? That's the interesting question.

Indeed. I think you've identified an issue that I'm going to steer clear of, because I have real difficulty in suspending disbelief in the Duncanite social system working in settlements as large as the ones they canonically have in 2100. I find this less plausible than uploaded minds, for example, and on a level with the rapid terraforming of Mars. This is probably because I'm an urban dweller in a pretty crowded country; I can see it working fine in the Oort, with ships and settlements weeks of travel apart, but not in anything larger than a village.

The social debate about whether the ghost is the original person is likely to be settled, one way or the other. The question is not whether the ghost is the original in objective reality, but what society perceives to be the truth, the resolution will transform the society and have implications for other debates as well.

That, on the other hand, is comparatively easy. It seems pretty clear that fifth wave societies are evolving towards "yes, the upload is the real person". I suspect that the real social conflict may not be AI vs. biolife, but fifth wave vs. the rest.

Increasing technological control over the interlocked global ecosystem, weather, etc, will force the emergence of a world government on Earth de facto, even if not du jure. The conflicting interests of the major states on Earth will be resolved one way or another, but how? And by who?

And there, too many people will vote preservationist for any radical changes to be adopted. I think the solution will be to simulate the climate of the preceding centuries, with fewer and weaker extreme events, predicted well in advance and thus doing minimal economic damage.

[RogerBW]

It seems to me (using John's most recent post to build on top of mine) that the splits may align: Earthbound / biological life / preservationist vs spacefaring / digital life / transhumanist. In spite of all the nanomods that let human bodies survive in space, you still need to cart around an awful lot of life support system to support them, particularly in the long term.

The Martian settlements will certainly maintain some degree of biolife - the hard work's already been done - but I'm unconvinced about the future of biohumanity even on the Moon. A biolife community needs a closed ecosystem, and the ability to make parts to fix the dry tech bits that support it (pumps and door seals and such like); a cyberlife-only community doesn't need the ecosystem at all (though door seals will still be handy to keep the dust out, and it'll perhaps have to minifacture a wider range of spare parts). Given the same number of productive hours, fewer of the cyberlife community's go into keeping itself alive, so it can outcompete the biohumans.

I don't see this turning into a huge war, however. It'll just be a gradual selection pressure, as more and more spacecraft and habitat owners don't want to bother hauling a life-pod around on the offchance a biohuman wants to use it. Eventually, space travel in a bio body will be a pastime of the very rich.

[johndallman]

That's a fairly plausible scenario. There's a problem with its long-term stability in that the teeming masses of Earth are dependent on He3 supplies for the energy to keep their systems running.

They have a vast population to produce ideas and industrial facilities to build them, but there's no obvious reason why they will retain that advantage. Space civilization can create AIs and build more modern industrial facilities.

If Earth's population can be gradually shrunk towards the unsupplemented carrying capacity of the planet, without any major conflicts (bound to be some minor ones) then civilization can embark on another step.